Zev was quick. She saw knowledge in his eyes and knew she'd given away too much information. Cursing silently to herself, she idly picked up a pebble and tossed it downstream.
"The forest is oppressive at times, isn't it?" she asked. "I find it so beautiful, all the colors, but sometimes it's hard to breathe when you're deep in the middle of it."
His eyes focused on her, all that piercing intelligence. She had to fight to stay relaxed. He looked as if he could see right into her soul. "You're very sensitive."
"That's what my mother always says," Skyler said. That much was true. Francesca said it all the time. She indicated his hand. Let him fish around for something plausible. "What happened to you?"
Zev didn't so much as flinch. He lifted his wrist for her inspection. "I was working and got a little careless. I tore my wrist on a nail. It's not a big deal but it was deep enough to bleed a lot. I put this cloth around it and it stopped."
"There's a first-aid kit at the camp. When we get there, I could put some antibiotic cream on it so the laceration doesn't get infected."
He nodded. "If we don't run out of time. We should get moving soon or night will fall. Here in the forest it tends to get dark fast."
She was happy to get moving. The faster they made camp, the faster she could heal her ankle and set out to follow the Lycan back to Dimitri.
"Do you live close by?"
"I'm camping with some friends a few kilometers from here," Zev explained. "Although I've been coming to these woods since I was a boy, so I'm very familiar with them."
She frowned at him as she pulled her throbbing foot from the stream. Her wince was very genuine. She was going to have to throttle Josef for making her injury so real. "You don't hunt here, do you? The wolves are protected in this preserve." She managed her most schoolmarmish voice, the one that always made Josef sit up and take notice—or topple over in gales of laughter.
"Sometimes with a camera, although when we were kids, we hunted for food. Not wolves, but other creatures, mostly wild fowl, partridge, things we could manage when we were pretty small. If we killed it, we had to carry it."
He was telling the absolute truth, which was why he was so good at intrigue. He mixed truth with implication—not outright lies. She tried to pull her boot back over her swollen ankle. It hurt like hell.
"I'll carry you."
"You will not," Skyler said. "I can walk. Just give me a minute to get my boot back on." Who knew what a Lycan might discern that close? "How far away is the camp? Have I been walking in circles? Sometimes I was pretty certain I'd been to the same place more than once."